Nearly half of Australians are anti-Muslim: study

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiemIn the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Nearly half of Australians are anti-Muslim: study

Feb 23, 2011

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They are Islamophobe for no reason other than their sheer stupidity. Their country’s GDP depends on foreign students from Asia and so if the Muslims stop going there then they will understand that it is they who need the Muslims, not the other way around!

A decade-long national study has found that nearly 50 per cent of Australians identify themselves as having anti-Muslim attitudes.

Researchers from universities across the country polled thousands of people about their attitudes to different cultures and whether they had experienced racism.

The research found around one in 10 Australians identified themselves as prejudiced against other cultures.

About one-quarter of those surveyed said they had anti-Semitic or anti-Asian attitudes, while a slightly larger number were prejudiced against Aborigines.

Anti-Muslim sentiment was even higher, at 48.6 per cent.

Lead researcher Professor Kevin Dunn from the University of Western Sydney says recent political rhetoric has not helped.

“If you continue to speak about a group as a problem, whether that be asylum seekers or Muslims, that will [be] cast within the public mind,” he said.

New South Wales was the state most intolerant of Muslims, with just over 54 per cent of people expressing prejudice.

The president of the Council of International Students, Robert Atcheson, says the survey is another blow to Australia’s already-damaged reputation.

“If you’re an international student that’s looking at coming to Australia, or Canada or UK or the US, that could definitely sway their decision to go somewhere else,” he said.